For a blink, there was no gravity. What seemed to be every colour in the universe, named and unnamed, splattered across everything—each atom held by a hue, at least. They flowed, static motion, like watercolours blown from a straw solidifying into a caricature of crystalline sculptures cruising on a cold conveyor belt in an airport, like rare nymphs frozen on canvases incorporated into careful choreographies carrying them from curator to curator. Like the glass of roselle tea in hand an evening ago, red so stubborn-stark, so deep it was almost violet, almost navy; red so inescapably transpicuous against your black uniform. Coloured black, colour-covered black. No heat on the nape of your neck, no space under your skin. One moment, shoulder on concrete floors, soles over solid walls; the next, all rigidities becoming very untrue. Untethered like birds escaping, like abandonment at sea. You’ve breathed out the last of your lungs’ particles, ceased inhaling for a long, long lifetime. For a blessed-cursed blink-or-lifetime, Nothing. A something, a Nothing.
Somewhere, a cosmic luggage handler grew bored and flipped a switch. The conveyor belt whistled like wildfire in the twinkling of an eye—final destination: you. Was there a point of beginning to the belt? Endless colours forever flooding into you, stopping up every empty gap within your skin. Fulfilled; cotton in your skull, stomach stuffed to the brim, oesophagus crammed and sealed, filled till you’re full. This was the inhale. You still weren’t breathing.
The starvingly unforgiving everlasting pull inwards meant
no breathing meant
no screaming, no vomiting, no crying.
Nothing but a collection of Somethings, lovingly hoarded in the ornamental jars of your cells, stacked nice-and-neatly against each other along your shelved flesh. An invasion of your void, an exodus from without, an inrushing influx.
Oppressing, suffocating blankdarknothing— stabbing, choking brightsharpeverything—
Lessers of two evils can and always will only ever be an illusion of choice, one your tomorrows would keep presenting to you. The universe just would not end.
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